


An asexual Barnes and the team that loves him

by FeralCreed



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Author Does Not Know How To Tag, Bucky is ace due to his trauma at the hands of Hydra but it's not discussed, F/M, How Do I Tag, M/M, Multi, ace bucky, and his relationship with everyone on the team, cute and fluff, some hugging and kissing and stuff, this is basically me exploring ace cat Bucky and what his relationships are like, this was intended to be fluff and crack but there's a tiny bit of serious stuff in there too kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 03:32:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8188004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeralCreed/pseuds/FeralCreed
Summary: Clint and Tony show Bucky memes. He spams his partners with them, regarding their superhero personas, on a regular basis. Written because I am ridiculous and the world needs more ace Bucky. Also can you tell that I cannot name things  to save my life what is that title.





	

Everyone knew it was a mistake to teach Bucky about memes. But when Steve, the one and only voice of reason, disappeared on a mission, Tony and Clint took it upon themselves to teach the resident supersoldier about a certain corner of the internet. It didn't take long for Bucky to turn it into a more or less daily routine. He'd wake up, shuffle out into the kitchen for coffee and a bowl of cereal. And he'd promptly search for the newest memes based on members of the Avengers team. The team quickly realised they had made a mistake, as Bucky was nothing if not a guy with plenty of time on his hands and an awful sense of humour. Steve had been driven half to tears dozens of times as Bucky joked or too-casually spoken about what Hydra had done to him. Everyone regretted teaching Bucky Barnes about finger guns.

 

Clint spams back. He jokes that routine is good for old people and those who have suffered from memory loss, and that he's really doing Steve a favour by “making sure our favourite amnesiac assassin is no more murderous than usual because his schedule's out of whack”. Steve looks disapproving and Bucky laughs. The two of them have contests to see who can find the funniest and most inappropriate ones.

 

Occasionally Steve tries to share with them about sensitivity but he just gets matching unimpressed looks every time and eventually gives up on getting them to take him seriously. It doesn't help that they often continue their ongoing war while being lectured. Shame is a word unknown to them. Clint does think he goes overboard once, when Bucky doesn't reply for a few minutes, but a question to Jarvis reveals that Bucky is in fact laughing too hard to answer him.

 

It becomes a serious thing, where they keep score and everything. Saturday mornings, the loser buys them both coffee from the tiny little corner shop with the girl who knows them both by name. Bucky tries all the different new flavours, of which there are many, and ends up switching them out for Clint's plain (two sugars, one cream) half the time. Clint will drink anything he's told is coffee, sometimes to Bucky's disgust. According to him, however, even the strangest drinks are all right when he tastes them in Clint's mouth. The delighted, half-lost look Clint gets after those kissing sessions is worth it. The light through the bay windows gives him a halo effect when they get there between ten and ten-thirty.

 

Sometimes one of them will quote a recent winning pic, and they both end up laughing into the kiss. The tabloids never seem to get tired of trying to get their picture on such outings, since the gold band on his finger marks Clint as Natasha's, but most people stopped caring long ago. Let the Avengers do what they want as long as the team stays intact. And Bucky, if nothing else, gives them something in common.

 

Tony, for his part, always seems to be mildly amused at what Bucky sends him. Jarvis holds the messages until a normal hour if Bucky's up in the middle of the night when Tony's sleeping. But if they're both awake, Bucky almost always goes to join him in the lab, curling up in the beanbag in the corner that's there especially for him. He plays fetch with Dum-E as the billionaire rants or mumbles to himself, often unintelligible under the loud music. Rather than stressing him out, the background noise helps quiet thing in Bucky's head, giving him outside stimulus to focus on. He doesn't understand, but the fact that it works is good enough for him.

 

Unfortunately Tony has a horrible habit of finding memes that focus on the less favourable aspects of his past. Bucky eventually found the perfect way of combating that. He finds fanart and security-cam screenshots of team sleepovers and spams him with them so fast that he doesn't have the chance to catch up. often he'll grab one of the bottled coffees out of the fridge and go to the lab, delivering both caffeine and affection. Tony almost never asks for the attention he needs, but Bucky gives far more freely than he receives and doesn't mind it that way. He doesn't consider Tony to be slacking, and even if he did, the rest of the team is more than happy to step in when it comes to showing Bucky love.

 

So even if Tony sometimes does things that Bucky considers inappropriate – even more than that one time Clint shared half a dozen 'Hydra trash party' memes – the supersoldier sticks with him anyway. When Tony gets stuck on some problem, Bucky likes to blanket him in touch, rubbing his back as he murmurs quiet words of approval and reassurance in his ear. Tony tells him he helps, never thanking him outright but certainly conveying the sentiment. And if he designs Bucky a car instead of telling him he likes him, well, that's between them and Bucky is okay with it.

 

The only limits with them is with what Bucky sends him. They have plenty of arguments and bickering matches, often terminated with mutual pouting. But regardless of how many times they fight, they never seem to stay angry at each other for long. Either it's Tony's need for basic comfort or Bucky's desire to have things smooth between them. Starks have always been news fodder, so they keep their affection confined to the Tower, but there's no lack of appreciation. The nighttime view from the top of Avengers Tower is absolutely stunning, especially with candlelight.

 

Steve is far more sensitive to things than Bucky is. Which means most of his efforts center around memes that make fun of the various 1940 Captain America costumes. No man can wear booty shorts onstage and escape the teasing of his best friend. And a lot of Bucky's endeavours center around the A on his headpiece having something to do with asexuality, which Steve lets him get away with. Just like he lets him get away with everything else, really.

 

“What are you even doing with your life, Buck?” Steve asks one morning, when a grand total of eighty-seven pictures flood his phone soon after he wakes up. Bucky just shrugs and takes a bite of frosted flakes. Steve's smile softens, like it does practically every time he sees him, and he shrugs. They both know he approves of anything that makes Bucky happy as long as it's legal. When he comes over to get something out of the fridge, he kisses the top of Bucky's head and laughs at the purr he gets in response to his affection.

 

It took Steve a long time to stop blaming himself for what had happened to his friend, and even longer for him to accept the changes that had happened. But even though Bucky was still the same in a lot of ways, in others, he'd always be different. The hardest change for the blond to get used to was Bucky's disinclination toward sexual contact, a marked difference from his pre-war attitude. His desire for any other sort of affection was the same as ever, though, and eventually Steve settled into the changes and accepted his friend for just who he was.

 

Still, there's no denying the grin on Steve's face when Bucky wears one of his hoodies with the Captain America shield on it. Even if the blond thinks it's a little ridiculous, he approves of his best friend and boyfriend being so firmly in his corner. That's something that never changed. And Bucky, for his part, enjoys considering himself to be Steve's, as much as anyone's. It took some time for him to trust Steve after everything, but once that started, it happens wholeheartedly. Bucky loves Steve, possibly more than the others, and it's no secret to anyone.

 

When he wakes up, snuggled deep into the blond's arms, he's at peace. Even more so when Tony is there as well. He and Steve are the two that are officially dating, but Bucky has repeatedly been told he's always welcome to join them. Even though he's never taken them up on that invitation for sex, he frequently nudges his way between them for all types of cuddling. Steve is always pleased to have a boyfriend willing to try his questionable-looking attempts at cooking, anyway.

 

For Sam, at least seventy percent of what Bucky sends him includes pigeons or seagulls. Neither one of them can count the number of times that Sam has pointed out “I'm called the Falcon, Bucky, Fal-con”. Bucky just responds with another random bird meme coupled with an innocent-looking selfie. He may be a brat, but he knows he's a pretty brat, and it helps him get away with it. Their relationship got off to a rocky start, given that Bucky had tried to kill him as the Winter Soldier, but Sam had been forgiving.

 

And Bucky has almost always shown affection by being intolerable, so Steve is no help at all when Sam tries to complain about getting spammed by annoying bird pics. If anything, he encourages Bucky to do it. Even though he gets swatted upside the head for it, he has no regrets. Neither does Sam once he starts to get to know Bucky a little more. He still calls him a jerk more than he calls him by his actual name, but they both agree on that front.

 

Sam does grin when Bucky shows up with a Falcon hoodie, however. The supersoldier's love for oversized jackets is no secret, and Sam is pleased to be included in his collection. And if he approves of the collection of memes Bucky finds including him and Luke Cage, well, he keeps that to himself. But he's pretty sure that Bucky knows. It's hard to hide things from a supersoldier trained as a spy for a few decades. Despite that, they both know that Sam would put him above anyone else. He's loyal like that, even if Bucky sends him far too many pigeon photos. Sam swears he's going to get Bucky a gig as a nature photographer. Bucky says he'd be fine with it.

 

Natasha, on the other hand, swears she's going to stab him every morning he blows up her phone. She's been threatening that for the last two weeks, though, so there's no reason to stop. Bucky is reasonably sure that she isn't actually going to follow through on it. Her husband likes him a lot, for one thing. And so does she. Whenever he shows up, restless and seeking affection, she's almost always the first one to hold her hand out to him. Even though having sex makes him uncomfortable, he's spent many nights pressed against her, skin on skin. It comforts him in a way.

 

She glares at him whenever he comes in to personally show her a new meme, but he's actually gotten her to smile a few times, so he can take a few death threats. If she really meant it, he'd have some holes before now. And she laughed once, before fussing over him in Russian as she hugged him. He'd started to be a little more comfortable around her after that. Clint's been his favourite in the past, just because he wasn't quite sure what to think of Nat after he'd almost killed her so many times. But she'd been accepting of him and the ways he'd changed, more than Steve in some ways. By now he was just as comfortable around her as anyone else.

 

And the look of utter disgust on her face when he'd shown her a picture of herself as a literal black widow had been worth the kitchen knife she'd flung at his head. He makes up for it by bringing her a half-pound bag of her preferred vodka chocolate candy. She grumbles about it for the rest of the day but tugs him down on the couch next to her after dinner. The way she lets him lean into her tells him he's forgiven more than anything else could.

 

Thor replies exclusively with emojis and text faces. Bucky doesn't know when he learned about them, but he's rather obsessed. It's entertaining to see, at least, because Thor is up at all hours of the day and can be relied on to reply to what Bucky sends him no matter what time it is. Of course, it doesn't take long for them to like each other, and while Thor tells him that he isn't interested in the company of men the two of them spend many evenings together. Relearning chess, watching a movie, listening to an audiobook.

 

Even though they keep their hands to themselves, they don't keep their distance, and Bucky values their relationship just as much as any of the other ones he has. It's not a whole lot different from how he interacts with any of the others, since he doesn't seek any of them out for sex. Thor is a little more restrained but better that than too free. Bucky is comfortable with him regardless, and the demigod refers to him as a 'fine companion'. Some of the nuances of the memes escape the blond, but he laughs at all the ones that Bucky shows him.

 

Vision also does not understand the internet obsession with memes. At all. Bucky hadn't been sure what to think of them at first either. They weren't fully human but not inhuman either. Eventually Bucky gets to know them better and understands a little more about the fact that they prefer to go by gender neutral pronouns. He slips up a dozen times but Vision is patient with him. Since they're firmly committed to the idea of being faithful to Wanda, the two of them don't do much kissing or touching.

 

Bucky's all right with that, and he and Vision are close friends even if they occasionally hold hands. It's usually Bucky initiating things, but Vision is skilled at picking up on when he needs comfort. Mostly they just cuddle on the couch in the living room. Vision is connected to countless information networks and it's common for Bucky to go to them when he can't sleep. The android doesn't need to do so themselves but is always happy to recite from random passages on Wikipedia or other article sites. Plenty of times, he's fallen asleep listening to them talk. And Vision always carries him back to bed after, one of few strong enough to do so.

 

It was Vision who helped him figure out his own asexuality. Bucky hadn't been sure, at first, that what he felt was valid. Everything on record about him was so different, portraying him as someone who always had some lover or play date. Sam had told him it was likely that things would have changed, but he hadn't expected that to be one of those things. Vision had been quite helpful, and Bucky was pretty sure that they'd broken into a few databases to share what they had. Both they and their girlfriend had done a lot for him.

 

And Wanda is initially just as confused with the whole meme thing. She assumes it's a type of bonding technique, which isn't wholly inaccurate. Bucky explains it all to her, patiently outlining things until she says she understands. He smiles when she agrees, kissing her cheek and settling back against the bed with her. They spend most of their time together in her room. Bucky hasn't made any effort to personalise his own, beyond adding pictures of himself and the team, and he likes the decorations she's put up in her own.

 

They spend a lot of time curled up on her bed, Bucky with a leg casually tossed over hers or an arm over her waist. Sometimes they kiss, hands wandering, but it's not often. Wanda is as equally committed as her boyfriend and Bucky doesn't begrudge them that in the slightest. He kind of admires it, since it seems like a lot of people aren't willing to do that with their relationships. And they are a nice looking couple who respect each other. Bucky considers himself very lucky to be included in their relationship even if it's not in the traditional way.

 

She helps him with the nightmares as well. Even though he dislikes having anyone poke around in his head, he trusts the team, enough that he can take her help to get past the greater pain of being kept up all night. And she knows how to use her powers to soothe someone's mind, to help smooth out all the hurt in his. He doesn't go to her for that purpose often, but when he does, she's perfect at giving him help, and he does what he can in return. Wanda seems to appreciate his efforts at doing things for her.

 

And then there's Pietro. Bucky still isn't sure he fully understands the story of how he survived the mess in Sokovia, but the runner is snarky, even worse than Clint. He has the exact same horrible brand of humour, sending back his favourite Winter Soldier memes even if they're a tad on the nose. They snap and tease at each other so much that Steve thought they hated each other for a good while. It's only when he walks in on them kissing that he realises otherwise. And even though Bucky's embarrassed about being caught, certainly more than Pietro, at least it gives Steve peace of mind that they aren't going to try to kill each other or anything in the near future.

 

Pietro talks about the experiments that enabled his powers, sometimes. Bucky listens, his hand growing too tight around the other man's occasionally, but never asking him to be quiet. Sometimes Bucky rambles about his own experiences, but it's rare. He prefers to listen and offer what comfort he can. It's rarely anything too physical. Even though Pietro is touchy-feely, he isn't often sexual. It's more common for him to get himself off, from what Bucky's seen of him.

 

So it works between them. Bucky curls close, and while Pietro runs his hands over his body, he doesn't push for anything. He seems to like the other's presence there more than anything else, something they have in common. It's so common to see him in fast motion that it's a task to get him to slow down. One that Bucky is capable of, if the number of times the two of them have been found curled up somewhere is of any indication. Usually Pietro falls asleep in some strange place and Bucky joins him, managing to fit into awkward spaces without complaint. Pietro runs as hot as he does, so they rarely even need blankets. And even if Bucky is a little heavy, they manage to fit together well.

 

And both of them find it amusing that Pietro can literally run to the store to get something and be back within minutes. Bucky finds it hilarious that Steve tries to get the speedster to go on runs with the rest of the team. It doesn't take long for everyone to find out why that's a bad idea. Pietro flops down on the grass outside of the compound, and Bucky joins him, smiling when Pietro wraps an arm around his shoulders. He nuzzles the side of his neck and closes his eyes, trusting that the team, not to mention Pietro, will keep him safe. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've never really written an ace character but I don't think I did too horribly bad. Kudos and comments appreciated! Come scream about the Avengers at the-star-spangled-bucky.tumblr.com


End file.
